Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

It’s right around this time last year that I saw Hunted: The Demon’s Forge for the first time. There were a few buzz words thrown about at the presentation, but the one that stayed with me was “co-op at a distance.”

At a recent event, I had chance to get more hands-on time with the game. More specifically, I played through the tutorial and a short section in the beginning. I sat across from another game journalist and we worked a level together.

It’s been years since I’ve heard from inXile Entertainment. The last game I remember them developing was criminally underrated The Bard’s Tale. But over the past two years, the team has been working on a new fantasy project that aims to bring the dungeon crawler into the new generation of consoles. To do that, they’re bringing a co-op approach to the genre.

“It’s a different medium from what it was 10 years ago. We wanted to take who those gamers are and mix it up with the essence of those old dungeon crawl for those who hadn’t experienced it and for those who want to experience again and that’s how that product was born or how it came about,” said Brian Fargo, CEO of inXile Entertainment.

From what I’ve seen of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, the results are promising. First and foremost, this is an action-oriented game starring two adventurers — Caddoc and E’lara — who are thrown into a dark adventure after coming across a spirit named Seraphim who promises them spells and skills if they travel to a nearby town and look for crystals. What the duo finds reminds me a lot of the original Resident Evil.

The town is deserted. Caddoc says, “I have a bad feeling about this.” and a fleeing man is chased by a zombie-like creature and it eventually devours. That’s where inXile President Matthew Findley and Creative Director Maxx Kaufman get into business. They each control a character.

Matthew plays as Caddoc, a human barbarian who specializes in melee attacks. Maxx took on the role of E’lara, a female elf who deftly fires a bow. Each of the characters have three combat moves available to them — ranged, melee and magic — but they are dominant in their aforementioned specialities and get spells and improvements for their favored weapon. Immediately, Maxx shows us how different this dungeon crawler is by guiding E’lara into cover. She can shoot foes from behind boulders and large bricks walls, which happen to be destructable. Caddoc has his own ranged attack with a crossbow.